I’d made her happy. I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Happiness and me didn’t really sit right.

“So…” Aliyana said as she circled, gesturing to the statue. “Have you thought about its title?”

As I stared at that man, the rivulets nearly drowning his frame, the shadows looking like gushes of running blood, only one title came to mind. “Exsanguination,” I whispered before I’d time to think about it.

Aliyana tensed. Fuck. It was probably a stupid title. I was so shit at this whole art thing.

“The draining of blood?” Aliyana mused quietly. My eyes snapped to hers, but she was staring at the sculpture, an empathetic look on her face. “Exsanguination…” she murmured under her breath. Her shining eyes met mine.

“Of guilt,” I explained, my voice breaking. “Of every sin this man committed… of his actions that caused people pain… actions he can never take back. Those daggers are there for life.”

Aliyana sucked in a breath, and I dipped my head, feeling the truth of every word I’d just spilled cut into my black heart.

“And what was the inspiration?” she pushed tentatively.

I sighed and pushed my hair back from my face. I glanced to Aliyana, but I couldn’t take seeing the sorrow on her fucking beautiful face. “Shit, girl,” I snapped without caution. My eyes closed briefly as I tried to rein in these feelings, these fucking choking feelings I’d never dared let loose.

“You really need to know how I thought of this fucked-up piece? You need every damn sordid detail?” It came out harsher than I’d intended, but I wasn’t real comfortable with revealing this shit to anyone.

“Just something would be good.” Aliyana nervously inched closer to me, her voice barely above a whisper. “Like, how did you think of it? That should suffice for the text boards.”

Slowly inhaling through my nose, I dropped my head so my hair covered my face. “The guy’s a sinner. A guy that’s done some real fucked-up shit, but by the time he realized all the pain he’d caused others, it was too late. He’d already done the worst. He’d already ruined people… ruined lives… destroyed people’s innocence, changed people, forever changed people’s souls …”

In my mind, I saw Levi as a fourteen-year-old kid, me standing behind him, pointing out a member of a rival gang, a King. Levi held in his hands a Beretta. His little fingers were fucking shaking, face white with fear, scared shitless, but I ignored it all. Gio had nodded his head at me, ordering my little brother to earn the Heighter stidda, the star tattoo on a Heighter’s left cheek that showed you’d passed the initiation… by shooting a King.

I watched my twenty-five-year-old self stand behind Levi like a damn demon at his back, whispering in his ear for him to hurry. Lifting his slim arm to aim at our rival and ordered now as Levi did what I’d said and fired a bullet straight into the fucker.

But more than anything, I could see Levi turn to face me. I could still feel how fucking proud I was of him, that he’d proved himself to my “brothers”—the gang that was my everything and always had been since I was twelve. But I could also see the change in Levi’s face. The young kid Austin and Mamma cherished, forever changed, as his victim lay bleeding out on the ground.

“Elpi?” Aliyana questioned at my silence.

Feeling a tear drop run down my cheek, over the crucifix tattoo that now covered my stidda, I added, “Every dagger is a crime he committed, the guilt flooding everyone and everything around him. Fucking never-ending guilt.”

A hallow feeling set in my gut, and I glanced up to the sculpture. “But the daggers will never leave. The guilt will keep on pouring out. The wounds will never close… the cracks, the fractures on his body, will never heal.”

The sudden silence in the large gallery suffocated me, making me want to do nothing but cut and run, leave this fucking exhibition and my pain for someone else to deal with. But as I heard Aliyana’s quiet controlled breathing beside me, I couldn’t move.

For the first time ever, someone was sharing in this pain with me. A virtual stranger. And I didn’t know what the hell to do with how damn good that felt. I’d vowed to never let anyone in. I didn’t understand why I’d broken that vow with her.

Lifting my dirty hands, I unsubtly wiped away the few tears I’d failed to stop from spilling down my face and turned my back on the sculpture, on the sculpture that was all me. Tipping back my head, I stared out of the domed ceiling at the millions of stars. I suddenly didn’t feel so tortured as I pictured Austin and me as kids, Levi just a baby in my arms. Just a couple of young brothers, best friends, sitting on the roof of our trailer, lying back and watching the stars…

*****

Austin’s little hand pointed up to the dark sky. “Those three right there are Orion’s belt. Can you see them, Axe? The three stars in a row? And those right there are the Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters. But to see all seven stars at once, you have to close your eyes, then open them real quick, ‘cause some of them instantly fade away, leaving only a few left over,” he told me.

I looked to my eight-year-old kid brother as I held Levi in my arms. Austin was nothing but gangly limbs and big brown eyes, a mini me, and I laughed. “How d’you know all this, Aust?”

He shrugged and turned bright red. “I read it in a book at school. I’ve read lots of them.”

“You like the stars?” I asked.